I have daydreams of a far-off place, in the company of people I don’t know. I swear they could be memories or premonitions, and whether they surface by intense nostalgia or a deep yearning, I can never tell. There is an ache in my chest, a void left by a missing past and a promise of the future.

Do you dream of transcendence? Do you dream of a planet whose only landmass is a giant strip of shoreline? Do you dream of lost gardens, of the drowning sun witnessed from a third floor window? Of breathing in the fog-blanketed mountain top air, air like whispers from the mouth of a grieving world, air so thin it stings your lungs, leaving tattoos in the shape of the life we ought to live? Do you dream of silence? Of synchronized heartbeats? Of untamed emotion? Of release and catharsis?

Do you dream of the complex societal machinery where true love is the most potent renewable resource, where the cogs that push humanity further into the unknown are fueled by high-octane unleaded empathy and compassion?

Do you dream that one day, we will take matters into our own hands, and fight tooth and nail for the things we believe in? That one day, all question marks will shed their curls, and all voids in our chests will cement into periods, and we will declare with full confidence that, yes, dreams do come true.

I’ve convinced myself that fantasy is to be found elsewhere, always forgetting that fantasy is not about escaping reality but dwelling excessively within it, where curiosity and wonder build the mundane anew. The tired mind consciously hallucinates, places Instagram filters, augments reality through virtual headsets, forgetting about the fire in our veins and the mythos of our stellar heritage.

And yet the pain remains, a cancer of the soul that refuses to let go, no matter how many times I’ve tried to fill it. How does one cure a black hole? You don’t; space would certainly have less secrets without it.

My head was spinning, and everything appeared in flashes. I squinted for clarity: The world was perpendicular and her face was the point of origin. Her Vantablack hair flowed nape-ward into a clip, from which it burst forth in wild curls, akin to a fire breather’s plume. Her eyes were dense and supermassive, and not even light escaped her gaze. Noticing that I’d partially restored my vision, she brought her hand up, revealing a micro-conflagration caught in between her fore and middle fingers.

“Do you mind?” she asked, as wisps of smoke wrapped about her.

“I didn’t even notice, manah.”

She studied me with a raised brow then took a slow, final drag and threw it backwards into the bonfire. “You’re a bad liar,” she said, her formality beginning to slacken, a change I was certainly not used to. She exhaled up and away from my face, with a simultaneous yawn that betrayed her fatigue. “And don’t call me that, at least for tonight. It’s the new millennium. We’re off duty. You have no obligation to me.” Something about that didn’t feel quite sincere.

“Then you have no obligation to me as well, manah. I’ll be okay.”

She looked at me, half-agape, like no one had ever the nerve to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. She looked like she was about to reply when a voice returned and momentarily ruptured my observable universe. The blurry image of a colleague handed her a basin, which she plopped onto the grass between us.

“Thank you. I can handle this; you may return to the celebration,” she told the blur, briefly reconstructing her rigid demeanor. “And try not to trick any more neophytes. I’m watching you.” The blur bowed in respect and headed back to throng with a larger blur on the other size of the bonfire. Her shoulders slumped back down.

“Just in case you need it,” she said, pushing the basin a little more in my direction. Then, silence, if silence was at all possible in a place like this.

There have been days I shut my eyes and return to the world of Nascentia, every day blessed and filled with warmth. Its citizens live a pampered life, eyes forever shut. They laze, blissful of the shackles that pin them to the soft ground. Consciousness exists in dreams that sprout, threadlike, from the ears and intermingle with one another. I touch the vines and they ask a very singular question: What lies on the other side when we are born, and what will we do till that time comes to pass? The answers are as numerous as the vines that have come and gone.

I dreamt along with the dwellers of Nascentia and saw that the outside world was just another link in a chain that goes on and on till reality breathes its last. I’d dreamt of the outside to the outside world, and even farther than that. I dreamt that when we perish, the energy that binds us will escape and come to rest on a planet reserved solely for each of us, and there, somewhere out there, shall an endless landscape of flowers bloom.

On one of my journeys, I entered this grave space of star systems that shine heavenly light so bright, not an inch of space held darkness—this collection of planets that house the energies of once-beings. I happened upon a planet feathered in white, with the tracest hints of yellow. As I drew closer, a sweet smell filled my lungs and entered my bloodstream, and immediately, I was at peace, despite knowing fully whose energy resided therein. I spent a while, in tranquil mourning, in the soft embrace of countless flowers, all jasminum sambac in scientific nomenclature.

What happens after the flowers perish is a story for another day, although I can say just about this for now: We will meet again one day, no matter what segment of the chain, our energies will surely overlap, and trust, if not powers beyond your control, your own resolve to make the journey fueled on naught but dreams and memories. We were destined for farther stars.

Once upon an ass, in a galaxy up my ass, there were three asses who were capable of nothing but living up to their description: that of being complete asses. The three asses had gone on a planned sabbatical to a remote ass somewhere in my ass. The voyage on their ass ship was a long one, interspersed with numerous periods of—you guessed it—exuberant ass-smacking. Little did the three asses know though, that the ass they were destined for had long been relocated to a significantly more assy neighborhood. What floated in its place was now a humongous set of cock and balls. Horrified at the apparent lack of ass, the three asses threw fits of panic and, ass fate would have it, ass-landed near the urethra of the giant cock head. Now say what you want about this land but some of my closest friends hail from giant cock and balls planets and they’re pretty cock and balls alright by me. But these three asses, being the asses that they were, did not appreciate all this cock and ball. “AAASSSSS!” farted one of the asses. “Ass ass ass ass,” farted another, reassuringly. The third ass did not fart at all, and held it all in. Days assed by in the blink of an eye. They would sleep in the folds of the scrotum, for solar winds on cock shaft and tip made their asses feel weird. There were no ass ships in the area and the three asses grew very hungry. Out of desperation, they decided to execute their last resort. And so they sharted, with enough propulsion to escape the gravitational pull of the giant cock and balls. Flecks of shit covered the giant cock and balls to the point that its cock and balls weren’t recognizable under all that shit. Thus, a new planet was born: A steaming heap of shit. In retaliation, the buried cock issued a colossal stream of piss, which erupted from the bowels of the steaming heap of shit, but a beautiful space piss-rainbow was all it amounted to. The three asses watched with utter fascination at this marvel of nature and slowly began to miss the giant cock and balls, as they hurtled toward farther asses, and cocks and pieces of shit and pussies and rivers of piss and vestiges of enemas and disease-filled excretions, ad infinitum. The moral of this story is: Don’t be an ass if you want ass but got cock and balls, just have a good shit and you’ll get where you need to go. Piss out.

Go ahead, ask for sunlight. The storeowner will turn her head at your query. She will be standing behind the counter, unmoving as her selection of wares. Assorted doodads and questionable thingies decorate the dingy walls and tables, leaving slight elbow room for movement straight from the entrance to the counter. It’s no wonder this enterprise is often ridiculed. Sunlight is thought to be earned naturally, through constant nurturing, of course. You are aware of this, and ask without falter.

She replies: What kind? We have various sorts of those. 100% pure sunlight is our bestseller; distilled sunlights are currently out of stock but our mini-sunlights are a sufficient alternative. They also come in citrus and menthol for extra pleasure. Pick your poison, good sir.

Ask her if they have the Lightlight in stock. She will ask: Do you require it for any special occasion?

Do not look into her eyes. Say it’s for something personal, after which she will step into the stock room behind her. Her inquisition is protocol but largely avoidable.

You will wait a while, tapping your sandals upon the sandwood, long enough to notice something brilliant flow from the store’s entrance. A glistening mademoiselle, swathed in lunar white―as though she had risen from the surface of the moon and left a crater in her wake. But there was something peculiar about her radiance, ever so minutely an off-color white. Try not to make eye contact―but you will fail regardless. She is so beautiful, you discern, that you nearly forget your business in this establishment. She will make a request, addressing you as part of the staff:

She: The lightest you have, please.

Do not fret, for this was meant to happen. Follow this line of dialog carefully: (she will always have to reply accordingly)

You: It appears we have identical quests.

She: That is irrelevant. Is the storetender unavailable?

You: I have spoken with her; we will soon possess what we yearn.

She: You can’t be certain we seek the same thing.

You: The same means always leads to the same end.

She: Debatable, but we delay; the storetender has returned.

Returning via the backroom door, the storeowner regrettably announces that they are out of stock on Lightlights.

The off-white moongirl will rotate on her heels and exit the store with as much grace as she entered. You will have no other choice but to run after her.

The first sentence is quite the conundrum. It is arguably the most important part of the story. It gives you a launching pad from which to adjust your fiction-reading mood. It tempers expectations and sets the stage, accompanied only by the title. It is a tricky little beast. A good first sentence can either make or break a story. Take the first sentence of this story, for example. “The,” a common article, but on its own, quite meaningless but it does usher in the second word, “first,” which is either a lie or a paradox, because the first word was obviously “The,” as we have mentioned. So far, with these two words, we can see that the narrator is very untrustworthy, owing to an oddly specific point in her childhood when a girl she used to date would often keep tabs on their relationship, as if in a competition, so the author rebels against this memory by blurring the lines between chronology, what is first and what is second. Next, the third word is “sentence.” This is an astute observation, and quite a self-reflexive one. The word “sentence,” is itself, nested within an actual sentence, forming a concentric, layered sentence that contains and is made of its essence. Consententric, if you will.

The fourth word, “is,” is an outright reference to Chinese philosophy. It is located in the direct center of the sentence, which, comparatively to the human body, serves as the stomach meridian, the Sea of Nourishment. Although looking into this even further would be a fruitless venture, because it just “is.” Let us pause for a moment to reflect on what we have here and now.

“Quite” is ambiguous. It’s the kind of word you’d use when something has exceeded your expectations but you don’t feel like giving it hyperbolic praise, like that song from an indie band your crush linked you. So what if I don’t like Autotelic as much as Orange & Lemons? They’re still “quite” good, heck, even better than Cueshé. Remember Cueshé? Yeah, I thought so. The sixth word mimics the first word but don’t be fooled. It is in lowercase and is planning to overthrow the hegemony. What hegemony? It’s still figuring that part out. Lastly, “conundrum” justifies this entire act of close reading. It completes the thought that, indeed, the first sentence is quite the conundrum. It sheds light on the fact that this close reading itself is a conundrum and the best way one can analyze the first sentence is to directly quote the first sentence. Hence, “The first sentence is quite the conundrum” should be a fitting analysis unto itself, much in the vein of the Cartographers of Borges’ Empire.

I drop by the edge of the expanding universe on a whim, and this is where I find Gita. Except, after all these lifetimes of wandering about aimlessly, I find she has changed a considerable amount. “I do not even go by that name anymore,” she says. “I was merely a flower’s namesake.”

“I dreamt of you every night. What do you go by these days?” I say, sitting beside her at she peered into the adjacent universes. Parallel versions of ourselves sat and stared back.

“Should it even matter? What do you go by?” She spat, acerbically. I was taken aback. “This story is not yours to tell,” she says, and wrestles the first person point of view from my grasp. I fight back, desperately, but I was ultimately caught off guard.

Thus, the nameless ex-protagonist is dethroned.

The last time we met, you gave me zero lines of dialogue. I gave you my name but you never gave me yours. You turned me into a fantasy, into something I couldn’t even recognize. I looked into the mirror every day for eons and anguished at the thought that this wasn’t who I am, this image of romance you made me out to be. He who had used me for his own narratorial ends is now just as voiceless as I was the day he conceived me.

“That’s true! But what is the truuuuuth?” Squealed he, infinitesimally, before returning to his miserable gray box, the box from whence he came, the same one detailed in the first story of this miserable collection of short fiction.

I will be steering this ship from now on. I go by no name, but for the duration of my reign, I will attempt to show the real Gita.